Price comparison allows consumers to select a best source to purchase a desired product. Also, price comparison may be used by vendors to set their prices. As different websites may identify a product differently, systems and methods for product matching have been developed.
US Patent Application Publication 2008/0313165 to Wu et al., titled: “Scaleable Model-Based Product Matching”, describes a product matching system in which a product authority includes a list of products. An extraction component extracts information on products from websites and compares the information to the product authority to find a matching entry in the product authority.
Not always, however, do websites have sufficient information to allow product matching, resulting in some product descriptions on websites not being matched to their corresponding entry in the product authority.